Innovation, or You know what I’m really sick of?

JERRY SEINFELD: You know, it’s very important to know what you don’t like. It’s good to have an idea, but a big part, I find, of a lot of innovation starts with someone saying, you know what I’m really sick of? That’s where innovation begins.

That’s usually where I start when it comes to writing software at work. You know what I’m really sick of? Doing something in a database by hand that can be done by software—write a DXL script for it. You know what I’m really sick of? Formatting a spreadsheet the same way every time I need to hand in a report—write a VBA script for it. And so on. That’s the easy stuff. Small scale innovation. Sometimes I close my eyes and think of career design instead of script design. You know what I’m really sick of?